CRN Channel Awards - Finalist Q&A with Carlos Fernández Pilo, sales professional at Snapdragon
Carlos Fernández Pilo talks being a finalist at this year's CRN Channel Awards
What prompted you to enter the CRN Channel Awards this year?
Innovation sits at the heart of what we are doing with Snapdragon. We felt the Vendor Innovation Award was the right platform to recognise the progress being made in the PC category. With Snapdragon X Series, we are bringing greater choice and new capabilities to a market that has been dominated by established architectures for many years. Just as importantly, we are working closely with the UK channel to turn that technology into something meaningful and accessible for customers.
What would winning this award mean to your people, customers and partners?
Winning would be a powerful recognition of the teams and partners helping us challenge the status quo in the PC market. For our people, it would acknowledge the work that has gone into bringing Snapdragon innovation into a new category. For our partners and customers, it would validate the importance of greater choice and competition, and the opportunity to rethink what they should expect from the next generation of Windows PCs.
What is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?
One of our proudest achievements has been growing Snapdragon from a new proposition in the PC category into one backed by an expanding commercial ecosystem. Alongside technology innovation, we invested significantly in partner enablement through our Snapdragon Accreditation programme and the development of sales and enablement assets. For us, true innovation means building an ecosystem that helps customers understand, adopt and realise the value of Snapdragon.
What have been the biggest challenges of the current year and how have you overcome them?
Breaking into an established PC market with a genuinely different proposition requires changing long-held perceptions. We have done this by making customer evidence central to how we demonstrate innovation. Instead of relying on specifications alone, real-world examples such as Christ's Hospital show partners how Snapdragon is reshaping the PC experience. At Somerset Council, XMA deployed Snapdragon-powered devices at scale. We have also reduced a key barrier to enterprise adoption through a fully funded proof-of-concept programme, allowing resellers to test devices in customer IT environments at no cost and driving deployments globally.
What lessons do you think the industry has learned over the past year and what changes does it still need to make?
The conversation around AI PCs has evolved rapidly over the past year, but we believe the industry is still at an early stage. The next evolution will be driven by on-device AI, as more applications are designed to take advantage of dedicated AI processing on the PC. For the industry, the challenge now is to turn that capability into meaningful experiences that customers can see, use and value every day.
What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming 12 months and how do you plan to capitalise on them?
The next 12 months present an exciting opportunity to redefine what customers expect from their PCs. As on-device AI develops, the focus will shift from the technology itself to the experiences it enables. Our role is to accelerate that transition by continuing to innovate with Snapdragon and working across the ecosystem to turn capabilities into tangible customer value. That means bringing together technology, partners, and real-world customer experiences to show what the next generation of computing can look like. We will also help partners capitalise on sustainability: PCs powered by Snapdragon X Series use less energy than comparable competitor devices, an increasingly important consideration in UK public sector procurement.
Be part of the celebration that brings the industry’s brightest talent together. Join us at the CRN Channel Awards and experience an unforgettable evening of recognition, networking, and inspiration.
Tables are filling fast – secure yours today and don’t miss the chance to be in the room where excellence is celebrated.